25 April 2013

Fighting Terrorism with Crowdsourcing

You want to defeat terrorists? Use crowdsourcing--why wasn't Reddit (and the rest of us) given the Lord & Taylor video?

Reddit and the Marathon Bombers: The Wise Way to Crowdsource a Manhunt : The New Yorker: " . . . the Redditors faced a simple, but insuperable, obstacle when it came to identifying the Tsarnaevs, namely that the two brothers were not, as far as I can tell, in any of the photographs that were widely available before Thursday morning. The footage that convinced investigators that the Tsarnaevs were prime suspects was the footage from the Lord & Taylor surveillance cameras, which hadn’t (and still hasn’t) been released to the public. This is an obvious point, but one that’s been overlooked: Reddit had no real chance of identifying the right suspects because it didn’t have access to the information that mattered. (Had the clip of the Tsarnaevs walking down Boylston Street been publicly available last Tuesday, I don’t think there’s any doubt Redditors would have flagged them as suspicious.) Whatever the value of the wisdom of crowds, it isn’t magic: you can’t ask the crowd to find someone that, in a sense, it’s never seen. . . ."

Afternoon MoJoe: Google’s Eric Schmidt on how technology upgrades the war on terror — MSNBC: "Not only did photographs capture and add surveillance to nearly every inch of the crime scene . . . “In the future, as terrorists have to opt in to using technology, the room for error becomes much greater, and millions of people with smartphones are able to catch them in their tracks and press rewind,” said Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, the company’s internal think-tank, and Schmidt’s co-author on the new book The New Digital Age." The Apple Economy Isn't Done Yet : The New Yorker: " . . . the company is trying to keep shareholders happy by dispensing some of its cash mountain on stock buybacks, and by promising to gear up the company a bit by issuing some debt. Together with a raised dividend, this financial engineering may put a floor under the stock for a while. But it will be Apple’s computer engineers, programmers, and designers—rather than its financial engineers—who will determine the company’s fate."Fed guidelines: Carmakers must step up to stop distracted driving NBCNews.com Hoping to prevent distracted driving – blamed for causing more than 10 percent of all U.S. highway fatalities – the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released voluntary guidelines Tuesday to keep drivers' eyes on the road rather than on ... New Chevy Spark claims EV efficiency crown Los Angeles Times Chevrolet says it has earned bragging rights as the car company with the most efficient electric vehicle. The automaker says that the 2014 Spark, which is set to go on sale this summer in California and Oregon, has an EPA estimated range of of 82 miles when ... 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When done right, it enables gamers to team up and have a great time with friends and family that are not as skilled. Monaco, out now for PC and soon for Xbox Live Arcade, does co-op right. Developer Pocketwatch Games ... Next Call of Duty to drop 'Modern Warfare' name, called Call of Duty: Ghosts MCV That's according to a retail listing on Tesco Direct. It could be wrong, of course, but the clearly final product cover image it includes more or less proves its authenticity. It lists the release date as December 31st – a placeholder, certainly. The game will almost ... MCV Toyota Outsells GM for Fifth Quarter Amid Yen-Led Recovery Bloomberg Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) outsold all automakers for a fifth straight quarter as the yen's depreciation sharpens the Japanese company's edge over General Motors Co. (GM) and Volkswagen AG. (VOW). Worldwide sales at Toyota, including those of ... 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